Ball Aero delivers WorldView-3 to Vandenberg

BOULDER – Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has delivered the next-generation commercial remote-sensing satellite built for Longmont-based DigitalGlobe Inc. (NYSE: DGI) to the launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The WorldView-3 satellite is slated to fly aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in mid-August. The satellite will provide hi-resolution images of earth that will be sold to governments and commercial businesses.

WorldView-3 carries a Ball Aerospace-built atmospheric instrument called CAVIS, which stands for Clouds, Aerosol, water Vapor, Ice, and Snow. CAVIS will monitor the atmosphere and provide correction data when WorldView-3 photographs earth objects through haze, aerosols or other atmospheric obscurants.

Once WorldView-3 is operational, the company will be able to deliver imagery with significantly greater clarity and spectral depth than anything else on the commercial market, according to a company press release.

“Ball has incorporated significant data-gathering advances into this latest addition to the DigitalGlobe constellation,´ said Rob Strain, president of Ball Aerospace. “Our new CAVIS sensing instrument will provide atmospheric correction data that will increase the volume of usable imagery captured by the primary imaging sensor.”

WorldView-3 builds upon WorldView-2 and WorldView-1 technology, allowing it to collect images of large areas faster than competing satellites, the company claimed.